Boy, those two weeks just flew by, huh?
You remember this, right? Hockey that isn’t much fun to watch. Meaningless hockey. Hockey that leaves you angry and baffled instead of excited.
If you’d somehow managed to forget, boy did the Devils have a reminder for you Wednesday night.
The Devils didn’t come roaring out of the Olympic break. They didn’t capitalize on the energy of the sellout crowd that came to celebrate Jack Hughes’ potentially career-defining performance and Team USA’s gold medal in the winter Olympics.
Instead they did what they’ve done so many times as the season slipped away over the last two months – came out shooting blanks and threw away a great performance from goalie Jake Allen and lost 2-1 to the Buffalo Sabres.
It was New Jersey’s fourth straight loss and its sixth in the last seven games.
The Devils were shut out by Buffalo goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen for the first 57 minutes, 30 seconds.
Luukkonen stopped 27 of 28 shots but didn’t get a piece of either of the Devils’ best shot attempts – breakaways by Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier that were shot over the net.
Bratt missed on a backhander with 1:55 to go in the first. Instead of taking a lead to the locker room after a period in which they’d outshot Buffalo 12-9 and generally carried play the period ended in a scoreless tie.
Buffalo would get a goal from it’s U.S. Olympian, Tage Thompson, midway through the second to make it 1-0.
The Devils had a chance to even the score late in the period when Hischier broke in alone on Luukkonen, but the Devils captain had the puck roll on him and his shot sailed high.
A turnover by Hughes at his own blue line led to the Sabres’ second goal midway through the third.
And that was just about that.
The Devils got a let Timo Meier goal to make the score look closer than it probably was, but couldn’t find the equalizer.
The Devils won’t have to dwell on the loss very long. They travel to Pittsburgh to play the Penguins at 7 p.m., Thursday. Safe to assume Jacob Markstrom will get the start in Pittsburgh. Markstrom is coming off a pretty solid Olympics where he went from being the No. 3 goalie on the roster to starting both the qualifying round and quarterfinal games for Sweden. … Pittsburgh hasn’t played since a 5-2 win over Buffalo on Feb. 5. That was Pittsburgh’s seventh win in its last nine games. The Penguins currently hold second place in the Metropolitan Division.
So much for building on the Olympics. This was another one of those games that shows how little fight this Devils team has in it and how they just wilt under adversity. Just same old 2025-26 Devils. Bratt and Hischier don’t even get shots on goal on two breakaways that would have changed the course of the game. Hughes with a horrible turnover on the eventual winning goal. … Does anyone still think they’re going to turn this thing around?